Samsung’s Exynos processor is causing poor battery life for the Galaxy S9

When Samsung announced the Galaxy S9/S9+ at MWC this past February, one of the more concerning aspects were the unchanged battery capacities. Just like the S8 series before it, the Galaxy S9 and S9+ come equipped with 3,000 mAh and 3,500 mAh batteries, respectively. Thanks to this and a power-hungry processor, this has resulted in less-than-awesome battery performance for a lot of users.

Similar to many of Samsung’s other phones, the Galaxy S9 and S9+ have different processors based on which region you buy the phone in. The handsets are powered by the Snapdragon 845 here in the States, but in other parts of the world, they use Samsung’s own Exynos 9810 chipset. Battery life is perfectly fine for the Snapdragon-equipped variants, but the Exynos ones have bit somewhat of a dumpster fire.

Strategy Analytics recently conducted a battery life test comparing the Exynos Galaxy S9 against some of its top competitors, and out of seven phones that were tested, it came in at sixth place.

Sony saw a couple big wins with the Xperia XZ2 and XZ2 Compact that came out of the test with 36 hours and 1 minute and 34 hours and 20 minutes, respectively, and even last year’s LG G6 fared quite well with 32 hours and 35 minutes. However, the Galaxy S9 with the Exynos processor clocked out at just 26 hours and 52 minutes.

For this test, Strategy Analytics said —

Battery performance for all devices was measured by determining the length of time taken to fully empty the battery under a ‘typical user scenario.’

AnandTech also found similar results in its testing. While the Galaxy S9+ with the Snapdragon 845 saw 10.48 hours of battery life while web browsing on Wi-Fi, the Exynos-powered Galaxy S9 saw just 6.80 hours.

That sort of battery performance is abysmal for a flagship phone like the Galaxy S9, and it’s pretty ironic considering that the culprit of this issue is Samsung’s own mobile processor.

If you’ve got a Galaxy S9 or S9+ with the Exynos 9810, what’s your battery life been like?